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Camille (La Dame aux Camilias)

A >> Alexandre Dumas, fils >> Camille (La Dame aux Camilias)



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CAMILLE (LA DAME AUX CAMILIAS)

by ALEXANDRE DUMAS fils




Chapter I

In my opinion, it is impossible to create characters until one
has spent a long time in studying men, as it is impossible to
speak a language until it has been seriously acquired. Not being
old enough to invent, I content myself with narrating, and I beg
the reader to assure himself of the truth of a story in which all
the characters, with the exception of the heroine, are still
alive. Eye-witnesses of the greater part of the facts which I
have collected are to be found in Paris, and I might call upon
them to confirm me if my testimony is not enough. And, thanks to
a particular circumstance, I alone can write these things, for I
alone am able to give the final details, without which it would
have been impossible to make the story at once interesting and
complete.

This is how these details came to my knowledge. On the 12th of
March, 1847, I saw in the Rue Lafitte a great yellow placard
announcing a sale of furniture and curiosities. The sale was to
take place on account of the death of the owner. The owner's name
was not mentioned, but the sale was to be held at 9, Rue d'Antin,
on the 16th, from 12 to 5. The placard further announced that the
rooms and furniture could be seen on the 13th and 14th.

I have always been very fond of curiosities, and I made up my
mind not to miss the occasion, if not of buying some, at all
events of seeing them. Next day I called at 9, Rue d'Antin.

It was early in the day, and yet there were already a number of
visitors, both men and women, and the women, though they were
dressed in cashmere and velvet, and had their carriages waiting
for them at the door, gazed with astonishment and admiration at
the luxury which they saw before them.

I was not long in discovering the reason of this astonishment and
admiration, for, having begun to examine things a little
carefully, I discovered without difficulty that I was in the
house of a kept woman. Now, if there is one thing which women in
society would like to see (and there were society women there),
it is the home of those women whose carriages splash their own
carriages day by day, who, like them, side by side with them,
have their boxes at the Opera and at the Italiens, and who parade
in Paris the opulent insolence of their beauty, their diamonds,
and their scandal.

This one was dead, so the most virtuous of women could enter even
her bedroom. Death had purified the air of this abode of splendid
foulness, and if more excuse were needed, they had the excuse
that they had merely come to a sale, they knew not whose. They
had read the placards, they wished to see what the placards had
announced, and to make their choice beforehand. What could be
more natural? Yet, all the same, in the midst of all these
beautiful things, they could not help looking about for some
traces of this courtesan's life, of which they had heard, no
doubt, strange enough stories.

Unfortunately the mystery had vanished with the goddess, and, for
all their endeavours, they discovered only what was on sale since
the owner's decease, and nothing of what had been on sale during
her lifetime. For the rest, there were plenty of things worth
buying. The furniture was superb; there were rosewood and buhl
cabinets and tables, Sevres and Chinese vases, Saxe statuettes,
satin, velvet, lace; there was nothing lacking.

I sauntered through the rooms, following the inquisitive ladies
of distinction. They entered a room with Persian hangings, and I
was just going to enter in turn, when they came out again almost
immediately, smiling, and as if ashamed of their own curiosity. I
was all the more eager to see the room. It was the dressing-room,
laid out with all the articles of toilet, in which the dead
woman's extravagance seemed to be seen at its height.

On a large table against the wall, a table three feet in width
and six in length, glittered all the treasures of Aucoc and
Odiot. It was a magnificent collection, and there was not one of
those thousand little things so necessary to the toilet of a
woman of the kind which was not in gold or silver. Such a
collection could only have been got together little by little,
and the same lover had certainly not begun and ended it.

Not being shocked at the sight of a kept woman's dressing-room, I
amused myself with examining every detail, and I discovered that
these magnificently chiselled objects bore different initials and
different coronets. I looked at one after another, each recalling
a separate shame, and I said that God had been merciful to the
poor child, in not having left her to pay the ordinary penalty,
but rather to die in the midst of her beauty and luxury, before
the coming of old age, the courtesan's first death.

Is there anything sadder in the world than the old age of vice,
especially in woman? She preserves no dignity, she inspires no
interest. The everlasting repentance, not of the evil ways
followed, but of the plans that have miscarried, the money that
has been spent in vain, is as saddening a thing as one can well
meet with. I knew an aged woman who had once been "gay," whose
only link with the past was a daughter almost as beautiful as she
herself had been. This poor creature to whom her mother had never
said, "You are my child," except to bid her nourish her old age
as she herself had nourished her youth, was called Louise, and,
being obedient to her mother, she abandoned herself without
volition, without passion, without pleasure, as she would have
worked at any other profession that might have been taught her.

The constant sight of dissipation, precocious dissipation, in
addition to her constant sickly state, had extinguished in her
mind all the knowledge of good and evil that God had perhaps
given her, but that no one had ever thought of developing. I
shall always remember her, as she passed along the boulevards
almost every day at the same hour, accompanied by her mother as
assiduously as a real mother might have accompanied her daughter.
I was very young then, and ready to accept for myself the easy
morality of the age. I remember, however, the contempt and
disgust which awoke in me at the sight of this scandalous
chaperoning. Her face, too, was inexpressibly virginal in its
expression of innocence and of melancholy suffering. She was like
a figure of Resignation.

One day the girl's face was transfigured. In the midst of all the
debauches mapped out by her mother, it seemed to her as if God
had left over for her one happiness. And why indeed should God,
who had made her without strength, have left her without
consolation, under the sorrowful burden of her life? One day,
then, she realized that she was to have a child, and all that
remained to her of chastity leaped for joy. The soul has strange
refuges. Louise ran to tell the good news to her mother. It is a
shameful thing to speak of, but we are not telling tales of
pleasant sins; we are telling of true facts, which it would be
better, no doubt, to pass over in silence, if we did not believe
that it is needful from time to time to reveal the martyrdom of
those who are condemned without bearing, scorned without judging;
shameful it is, but this mother answered the daughter that they
had already scarce enough for two, and would certainly not have
enough for three; that such children are useless, and a lying-in
is so much time lost.

Next day a midwife, of whom all we will say is that she was a
friend of the mother, visited Louise, who remained in bed for a
few days, and then got up paler and feebler than before.

Three months afterward a man took pity on her and tried to heal
her, morally and physically; but the last shock had been too
violent, and Louise died of it. The mother still lives; how? God
knows.

This story returned to my mind while I looked at the silver
toilet things, and a certain space of time must have elapsed
during these reflections, for no one was left in the room but
myself and an attendant, who, standing near the door, was
carefully watching me to see that I did not pocket anything.

I went up to the man, to whom I was causing so much anxiety.
"Sir," I said, "can you tell me the name of the person who
formerly lived here?"

"Mademoiselle Marguerite Gautier."

I knew her by name and by sight.

"What!" I said to the attendant; "Marguerite Gautier is dead?"

"Yes, sir."

"When did she die?"

"Three weeks ago, I believe."

"And why are the rooms on view?"

"The creditors believe that it will send up the prices. People
can see beforehand the effect of the things; you see that induces
them to buy."

"She was in debt, then?"

"To any extent, sir."

"But the sale will cover it?"

"And more too."

"Who will get what remains over?"

"Her family."

"She had a family?"

"It seems so."

"Thanks."

The attendant, reassured as to my intentions, touched his hat,
and I went out.

"Poor girl!" I said to myself as I returned home; "she must have
had a sad death, for, in her world, one has friends only when one
is perfectly well." And in spite of myself I began to feel
melancholy over the fate of Marguerite Gautier.

It will seem absurd to many people, but I have an unbounded
sympathy for women of this kind, and I do not think it necessary
to apologize for such sympathy.

One day, as I was going to the Prefecture for a passport, I saw
in one of the neighbouring streets a poor girl who was being
marched along by two policemen. I do not know what was the
matter. All I know is that she was weeping bitterly as she kissed
an infant only a few months old, from whom her arrest was to
separate her. Since that day I have never dared to despise a
woman at first sight.



Chapter 2

The sale was to take place on the 16th. A day's interval had been
left between the visiting days and the sale, in order to give
time for taking down the hangings, curtains, etc. I had just
returned from abroad. It was natural that I had not heard of
Marguerite's death among the pieces of news which one's friends
always tell on returning after an absence. Marguerite was a
pretty woman; but though the life of such women makes sensation
enough, their death makes very little. They are suns which set as
they rose, unobserved. Their death, when they die young, is heard
of by all their lovers at the same moment, for in Paris almost
all the lovers of a well-known woman are friends. A few
recollections are exchanged, and everybody's life goes on as if
the incident had never occurred, without so much as a tear.

Nowadays, at twenty-five, tears have become so rare a thing that
they are not to be squandered indiscriminately. It is the most
that can be expected if the parents who pay for being wept over
are wept over in return for the price they pay.

As for me, though my initials did not occur on any of
Marguerite's belongings, that instinctive indulgence, that
natural pity that I have already confessed, set me thinking over
her death, more perhaps than it was worth thinking over. I
remembered having often met Marguerite in the Bois, where she
went regularly every day in a little blue coupe drawn by two
magnificent bays, and I had noticed in her a distinction quite
apart from other women of her kind, a distinction which was
enhanced by a really exceptional beauty.

These unfortunate creatures whenever they go out are always
accompanied by somebody or other. As no man cares to make himself
conspicuous by being seen in their company, and as they are
afraid of solitude, they take with them either those who are not
well enough off to have a carriage, or one or another of those
elegant, ancient ladies, whose elegance is a little inexplicable,
and to whom one can always go for information in regard to the
women whom they accompany.

In Marguerite's case it was quite different. She was always alone
when she drove in the Champs-Elysees, lying back in her carriage
as much as possible, dressed in furs in winter, and in summer
wearing very simple dresses; and though she often passed people
whom she knew, her smile, when she chose to smile, was seen only
by them, and a duchess might have smiled in just such a manner.
She did not drive to and fro like the others, from the Rond-Point
to the end of the Champs-Elysees. She drove straight to the Bois.
There she left her carriage, walked for an hour, returned to her
carriage, and drove rapidly home.

All these circumstances which I had so often witnessed came back
to my memory, and I regretted her death as one might regret the
destruction of a beautiful work of art.

It was impossible to see more charm in beauty than in that of
Marguerite. Excessively tall and thin, she had in the fullest
degree the art of repairing this oversight of Nature by the mere
arrangement of the things she wore. Her cashmere reached to the
ground, and showed on each side the large flounces of a silk
dress, and the heavy muff which she held pressed against her
bosom was surrounded by such cunningly arranged folds that the
eye, however exacting, could find no fault with the contour of
the lines. Her head, a marvel, was the object of the most
coquettish care. It was small, and her mother, as Musset would
say, seemed to have made it so in order to make it with care.

Set, in an oval of indescribable grace, two black eyes,
surmounted by eyebrows of so pure a curve that it seemed as if
painted; veil these eyes with lovely lashes, which, when drooped,
cast their shadow on the rosy hue of the cheeks; trace a
delicate, straight nose, the nostrils a little open, in an ardent
aspiration toward the life of the senses; design a regular mouth,
with lips parted graciously over teeth as white as milk; colour
the skin with the down of a peach that no hand has touched, and
you will have the general aspect of that charming countenance.
The hair, black as jet, waving naturally or not, was parted on
the forehead in two large folds and draped back over the head,
leaving in sight just the tip of the ears, in which there
glittered two diamonds, worth four to five thousand francs each.
How it was that her ardent life had left on Marguerite's face the
virginal, almost childlike expression, which characterized it, is
a problem which we can but state, without attempting to solve it.

Marguerite had a marvellous portrait of herself, by Vidal, the
only man whose pencil could do her justice. I had this portrait
by me for a few days after her death, and the likeness was so
astonishing that it has helped to refresh my memory in regard to
some points which I might not otherwise have remembered.

Some among the details of this chapter did not reach me until
later, but I write them here so as not to be obliged to return to
them when the story itself has begun.

Marguerite was always present at every first night, and passed
every evening either at the theatre or the ball. Whenever there
was a new piece she was certain to be seen, and she invariably
had three things with her on the ledge of her ground-floor box:
her opera-glass, a bag of sweets, and a bouquet of camellias.

For twenty-five days of the month the camellias were white, and
for five they were red; no one ever knew the reason of this
change of colour, which I mention though I can not explain it; it
was noticed both by her friends and by the habitue's of the
theatres to which she most often went. She was never seen with
any flowers but camellias. At the florist's, Madame Barjon's, she
had come to be called "the Lady of the Camellias," and the name
stuck to her.

Like all those who move in a certain set in Paris, I knew that
Marguerite had lived with some of the most fashionable young men
in society, that she spoke of it openly, and that they themselves
boasted of it; so that all seemed equally pleased with one
another. Nevertheless, for about three years, after a visit to
Bagnees, she was said to be living with an old duke, a foreigner,
enormously rich, who had tried to remove her as far as possible
from her former life, and, as it seemed, entirely to her own
satisfaction.

This is what I was told on the subject. In the spring of 1847
Marguerite was so ill that the doctors ordered her to take the
waters, and she went to Bagneres. Among the invalids was the
daughter of this duke; she was not only suffering from the same
complaint, but she was so like Marguerite in appearance that they
might have been taken for sisters; the young duchess was in the
last stage of consumption, and a few days after Marguerite's
arrival she died. One morning, the duke, who had remained at
Bagneres to be near the soil that had buried a part of his heart,
caught sight of Marguerite at a turn of the road. He seemed to
see the shadow of his child, and going up to her, he took her
hands, embraced and wept over her, and without even asking her
who she was, begged her to let him love in her the living image
of his dead child. Marguerite, alone at Bagneres with her maid,
and not being in any fear of compromising herself, granted the
duke's request. Some people who knew her, happening to be at
Bagneres, took upon themselves to explain Mademoiselle Gautier's
true position to the duke. It was a blow to the old man, for the
resemblance with his daughter was ended in one direction, but it
was too late. She had become a necessity to his heart, his only
pretext, his only excuse, for living. He made no reproaches, he
had indeed no right to do so, but he asked her if she felt
herself capable of changing her mode of life, offering her in
return for the sacrifice every compensation that she could
desire. She consented.

It must be said that Marguerite was just then very ill. The past
seemed to her sensitive nature as if it were one of the main
causes of her illness, and a sort of superstition led her to hope
that God would restore to her both health and beauty in return
for her repentance and conversion. By the end of the summer, the
waters, sleep, the natural fatigue of long walks, had indeed more
or less restored her health. The duke accompanied her to Paris,
where he continued to see her as he had done at Bagneres.

This liaison, whose motive and origin were quite unknown, caused
a great sensation, for the duke, already known for his immense
fortune, now became known for his prodigality. All this was set
down to the debauchery of a rich old man, and everything was
believed except the truth. The father's sentiment for Marguerite
had, in truth, so pure a cause that anything but a communion of
hearts would have seemed to him a kind of incest, and he had
never spoken to her a word which his daughter might not have
heard.

Far be it from me to make out our heroine to be anything but what
she was. As long as she remained at Bagneres, the promise she had
made to the duke had not been hard to keep, and she had kept it;
but, once back in Paris, it seemed to her, accustomed to a life
of dissipation, of balls, of orgies, as if the solitude, only
interrupted by the duke's stated visits, would kill her with
boredom, and the hot breath of her old life came back across her
head and heart.

We must add that Marguerite had returned more beautiful than she
had ever been; she was but twenty, and her malady, sleeping but
not subdued, continued to give her those feverish desires which
are almost always the result of diseases of the chest.

It was a great grief to the duke when his friends, always on the
lookout for some scandal on the part of the woman with whom, it
seemed to them, he was compromising himself, came to tell him,
indeed to prove to him, that at times when she was sure of not
seeing him she received other visits, and that these visits were
often prolonged till the following day. On being questioned,
Marguerite admitted everything to the duke, and advised him,
without arriere-pensee, to concern himself with her no longer,
for she felt incapable of carrying out what she had undertaken,
and she did not wish to go on accepting benefits from a man whom
she was deceiving. The duke did not return for a week; it was all
he could do, and on the eighth day he came to beg Marguerite to
let him still visit her, promising that he would take her as she
was, so long as he might see her, and swearing that he would
never utter a reproach against her, not though he were to die of
it.

This, then, was the state of things three months after
Marguerite's return; that is to say, in November or December,
1842.



Chapter 3

At one o'clock on the 16th I went to the Rue d'Antin. The voice
of the auctioneer could be heard from the outer door. The rooms
were crowded with people. There were all the celebrities of the
most elegant impropriety, furtively examined by certain great
ladies who had again seized the opportunity of the sale in order
to be able to see, close at hand, women whom they might never
have another occasion of meeting, and whom they envied perhaps in
secret for their easy pleasures. The Duchess of F. elbowed Mlle.
A., one of the most melancholy examples of our modern courtesan;
the Marquis de T. hesitated over a piece of furniture the price
of which was being run high by Mme. D., the most elegant and
famous adulteress of our time; the Duke of Y., who in Madrid is
supposed to be ruining himself in Paris, and in Paris to be
ruining himself in Madrid, and who, as a matter of fact, never
even reaches the limit of his income, talked with Mme. M., one of
our wittiest story-tellers, who from time to time writes what she
says and signs what she writes, while at the same time he
exchanged confidential glances with Mme. de N., a fair ornament
of the Champs-Elysees, almost always dressed in pink or blue, and
driving two big black horses which Tony had sold her for 10,000
francs, and for which she had paid, after her fashion; finally,
Mlle. R., who makes by her mere talent twice what the women of
the world make by their dot and three times as much as the others
make by their amours, had come, in spite of the cold, to make
some purchases, and was not the least looked at among the crowd.

We might cite the initials of many more of those who found
themselves, not without some mutual surprise, side by side in one
room. But we fear to weary the reader. We will only add that
everyone was in the highest spirits, and that many of those
present had known the dead woman, and seemed quite oblivious of
the fact. There was a sound of loud laughter; the auctioneers
shouted at the top of their voices; the dealers who had filled
the benches in front of the auction table tried in vain to obtain
silence, in order to transact their business in peace. Never was
there a noisier or a more varied gathering.

I slipped quietly into the midst of this tumult, sad to think of
when one remembered that the poor creature whose goods were being
sold to pay her debts had died in the next room. Having come
rather to examine than to buy, I watched the faces of the
auctioneers, noticing how they beamed with delight whenever
anything reached a price beyond their expectations. Honest
creatures, who had speculated upon this woman's prostitution, who
had gained their hundred per cent out of her, who had plagued
with their writs the last moments of her life, and who came now
after her death to gather in at once the fruits of their
dishonourable calculations and the interest on their shameful
credit, How wise were the ancients in having only one God for
traders and robbers!

Dresses, cashmeres, jewels, were sold with incredible rapidity.
There was nothing that I cared for, and I still waited. All at
once I heard: "A volume, beautifully bound, gilt-edged, entitled
Manon Lescaut. There is something written on the first page. Ten
francs."

"Twelve," said a voice after a longish silence.

"Fifteen," I said.

Why? I did not know. Doubtless for the something written.

"Fifteen," repeated the auctioneer.

"Thirty," said the first bidder in a tone which seemed to defy
further competition.

It had now become a struggle. "Thirty-five," I cried in the same
tone.

"Forty."

"Fifty."

"Sixty."

"A hundred."

If I had wished to make a sensation I should certainly have
succeeded, for a profound silence had ensued, and people gazed at
me as if to see what sort of a person it was, who seemed to be so
determined to possess the volume.

The accent which I had given to my last word seemed to convince
my adversary; he preferred to abandon a conflict which could only
have resulted in making me pay ten times its price for the
volume, and, bowing, he said very gracefully, though indeed a
little late:

"I give way, sir."

Nothing more being offered, the book was assigned to me.

As I was afraid of some new fit of obstinacy, which my amour
propre might have sustained somewhat better than my purse, I
wrote down my name, had the book put on one side, and went out. I
must have given considerable food for reflection to the witnesses
of this scene, who would nodoubt ask themselves what my purpose
could have been in paying a hundred francs for a book which I
could have had anywhere for ten, or, at the outside, fifteen.

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